Many parts of the State remained without power for days and thousands of businesses together suffered multi-$million losses. The biggest of those losses were suffered by Nyrstar’s lead and zinc smelter at Port Pirie, BHP Billiton’s gold, copper and uranium mine at Olympic Dam, Oz Mineral’s Prominent Hill copper and goldmine and Arrium’s steel works at Whyalla: collectively, the losses suffered by SA’s miners and mineral processors are in the tens of $millions.

With litigators breathing down their necks, nervous wind power outfits are running confused and desperate interference over the (now, well-known) cause.

Like this:

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Before the towers started collapsing 20MW of wind power had tripped off line due to high winds. That is about 10 wind turbines. When the transmission lines towers collapsed during a 88 second window,6 voltage glitches were created. The wind turbine software detected these glitches and enter ride through mode. during the ride through the turbine continues to generate power at a fixed frequency to support the grid. The wind turbine software only allows a limited number of ride throughs in a specific period of time. The default for the software was about 3 in 2 minutes. there were 6 in 88 seconds during the storm. So after the 88 second even 9 out of 13 wind farms had shut down. For the other 4 the wind turbine operator had at the time of installation had changed the ride through settings and the turbines continued to produce power.

Based on the report:
the wind turbines did not shut down due to high wind speeds.
There is no evidence to support the claim that the transmission towers collapsed after the blackout.
System frequency also stayed in spec after the 4th glitch but at that point 9 out of 13 wind farms had disconnected from the failing grid.
When the 5 and 6 glitch occurred the grid collapsed. The remaining wind and thermal generator could not keep the grid up.

Most of the wind farms have already changed there default ride through setting to 19 faults in 2 minutes. Of the remainder some have changed the software to 9 ride throughs and are evaluating there system before making further changes. one wind farm needs a software upgrade.

There is no report yet on why the transmission towers collapsed. The wind turbines survived the winds witout damage. The grid did not.

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it is the sa regulators at fault – they did not check out the wind farms operating parameters.

some wind farms worked on 6 transients and out. these kept working until the bitter end
some had 2 transients and out. these stopped working according to the farms settings.

Most of the 2 transients are capable of 6 or more ride throughs and have been adjusted

it is notable that no wind turbines were damaged. Approx 20MW of power was dropped early on due to excessive wind speed. All others continued to produce power until the transient limit was exceeded.
If you are going to berate the wt for cutting out you also need to complain about the interconnectors for disconnecting – surely these should have continued until the burned out!!!? You seem to want the wts to do this!

STT: ‘AEMO already has said most of the damage to transmission towers happened after the blackout began…And the BOM’s evidence to the committee, led by the bureau’s new head, Andrew Johnson, was that the storm was a pretty standard southern low-pressure system.’
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‘Notwithstanding claims that wind turbines were operating right up to the point of the total grid collapse, wind farms had been shut down much earlier in the day, as wind speeds approached 25m/s (90km/h), as at Trustpower’s Snowtown 1’
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‘…what many seem to miss is the fact that wind power output routinely collapses in South Australia (and across the entire Eastern Grid) on a total and totally unpredictable basis.’ [see STT graphic in the main post]
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NB those ‘routine collapses’ in the last quote above are due to lack of natural wind, not to technical failures.